Monday, December 21, 2015

Viewed as a stand-alone movie, The Force Awakens is perfectly watchable and interesting, with
decent dialogue, high production values, and a story that, if not compelling,
is at least intriguing. And, hey, it’s co-written by Lawrence Kasdan. But TFA is not a stand-alone movie: it’s
Episode VII of the Star Wars saga
and, as such, it’s a disappointment.

The biggest insult to fan loyalty is, of course, the death
of Han Solo. Many people’s favorite character in Episodes IV-VI, Solo doesn’t
get enough screen time in EpVII, and his relationships with the other
characters seem developed in rather perfunctory fashion. Still, for anyone
who’s cared about the characters for decades and valued the series since its
inception, Solo matters, and killing him off is a brutal slap in the face. (Hardly surprising behavior, unfortunately, on the part of the director who annihilated Vulcan and canceled an entire time-line so he could turn Star Trek into an action-adventure franchise featuring photogenic young people.) This wasn't narratively necessary. I suspect that Harrison Ford could have been persuaded to do two more films with enough cash—cash that would have been more than justified by the appeal to fans of his continued presence. And if this really did prove impossible, scenes involving him could have been shot for use in Episode IX (perhaps Han should have been missing throughout Episodes VII and VIII).

There’s also the jettisoning of much of the narrative
carefully crafted to fill out the decades following the battle of Yavin. While
some material not in the theatre-released films is still being treated as
canonical, most is not. As I understand it, writers of the various continuation novels (and other media products) were told to work within
carefully defined parameters precisely because LucasFilm wanted to stay focused
on particular historical periods. The implication was that Episodes VII-IX, if
they were ever made, would take place in a period significantly later than the
one on which TFA focuses. So fans
were free to grow interested and invested in the narratives crafted, under
LucasFilm’s supervision, for the immediate post-Yavin period.

Abandoning all of this material is an attack on fans,
it seems to me, just because fans should be free to embrace the unfolding
narrative wholeheartedly, not expecting it to be canceled. But it’s also a bad
idea because more thought seems to have gone into crafting this material than is evident in what replaces it in TFA. To take one
obvious example: it makes far more sense for Leia Organa to serve as President
of the Republic than for her to be a general. Everything we know about Leia
suggests that she’s a politician, not a soldier; turning her into one seems a
pointless plot device. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are random nods to the
decades of fan-endorsed narrative here; while “Ben” is, appropriately enough,
the name of Luke’s son in the novels—Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi was Luke’s all-too-brief mentor, not Han’s
or Leia’s, after all—“Ben” [rather than “Jacen”] is now the name of Han and Leia’s
dark-side-loving son. And while the novels characterized Emperor Palpatine as
bringing into being the “New Order,” the Nazi-like successor to the Empire
calls itself the “First Order.”)

Speaking of the Republic: the relationship between the
Republic and the Resistance as characterized in TFA is both unclear and puzzling. If the Republic is an established
entity with jurisdiction, etc., there’s something odd about the attempt to
depict its support for the Resistance as subterranean. Surely, everyone would
treat it as quite predictably and reasonably opposing the incursions of the
First Order. There would be no need for a Resistance separate from the
Republic. But, in TFA, the First
Order treats the Republic’s support for the Resistance as sneaky and
traitorous—without much in the way of explanation or justification.

And, on a political note: we’re back to the uninteresting
politics of EpsIV-VI. In EpsI-III, we get a genuinely interesting political
narrative, one in which lots of well meaning people (along with some
not-so-well-meaning ones) are cleverly manipulated into fighting each other to
bring about the fall of the Republic (after some thugs are manipulated into
fighting a losing battle to create sympathy for Senator Palpatine’s candidacy
for Chancellor). There’s lots of uncertainty and ambiguity; there are lots of
illustration of the ways in which good people can become caught up
inadvertently in promoting what turn out to be evil causes. There’s lots of
suspicion of people in power, even (!) in putatively democratic institutions.
None of that sort of cleverness is in evidence here: now, we’re just fighting
the Nazis. Sigh . . . .

Oh, and what about the McGuffin—the map to Luke? (I can only
hope that EpVIII and EpIX will offer some explanation of how this map came into
being, how Luke’s light-saber came to be hidden, etc.) The notion that the
chunk of star-map carried by BB8 couldn’t have been contextualized, so that
Luke couldn’t have been found without the other bit conveniently carried by
R2D2, seems wildly implausible. Good pattern-matching software should have
dealt successfully with this problem, and the fact that it didn’t makes the
technology available to our heroes seem clunky.

The destruction of the Republic’s central planet (it looks
like Coruscant, but apparently it’s not, since another system is named as its
location) is perfunctory in the extreme. We don’t know anything about the
Republic in its current guise; we don’t know anything about any of the people
involved. Indeed, there’s a lot more emotional engagement when, in EpIV, Leia
protests the destruction of Alderaan by the Grand Moff Tarkin.

Let’s see: we start out on a desert planet. The central
character is an orphan. Who finds a droid. That contains a hidden message.
Crucial to the war against the Dark Side. The orphan and friend flee the desert
planet in the Millennium Falcon. (It’s unclear to me how, in TFA, the ship happens to have enough fuel to get off-planet.) They’re mentored—briefly—by an old man with memories of glory from a generation
ago. Their primary opponent is a dark Force user who wears a black helmet and
who wields a red light saber (albeit this time with those weirdly inexplicable cross pieces). He
tussles for supremacy with a military leader; both report to a holographically
present evil overlord (in TFA, one with
the absurd name “Snoke”—what’s with that? “Palpatine” is a cool name, but “Snoke” . . . ?) who wonders whether family ties will compromise the
dark Force user’s loyalty. The forces of evil employ storm troopers (curiously wearing, in TFA, the same uniforms as their imperial predecessors from decades ago) and deploy a planet-killing . . . planet (hey, it’s not a
planetoid this time—a helpful graphic assures us that it’s much larger than the
original Death Star). The forces of evil also use the planet-killer to wipe out
an entire planet, just to show us that the planet-killer is very dangerous and
that the forces of evil really are Evil. Courtesy of the helmeted, evil Force-user, a woman is
trapped in a room in which she’ll be subjected to robotic torture—more evidence
of Evil. Fortunately, a weakness in the planet-killing planet’s defenses has
been discovered, and a team of X-Wing fighters, with a squadron leader we like and trust, can take it out if they hit the
right spot (repeatedly, this time)—but of course someone needs to lower the
shields that protect the planet-killer from attack. Our heroes manage to sneak
in, easily enough. They succeed in lowering the shield. And then the wise old
mentor goes out alone to meet the dark-helmet-wearing villain and is killed without
putting up a fuss. Oh, and did I mention that there was (at least one) (not-too-)surprising
hidden family relationship in play? And that a triangle seems to be in the making?Now, to be clear, I have no objection at all to ironic winks
and nudges. The occasional reference to details of earlier films would have
been entirely apropos. But cinematic reference isn’t the same thing as lifting
warmed-over plot points unironically. And that’s what happens here. One of the things that really distinguished Episode IV when it first appeared was the set of elements often described as evidence of a “used future” (or, better, a used distant past). Among the obvious merits of this feature is the sense of reality it engenders, the sense that we've entered a real world with an ongoing history. In a real world with an ongoing history, the likelihood that all of these narrative elements would repeat themselves seems infinitesimal. Episodes I-III featured a variety of interesting and distinctive plot points; there's no reason Episodes VII-IX couldn't as well.

Will The Force Awakens kill the franchise? Nope: lots of people seem to love it. Could it have been better? Much better? Absolutely. Shame on J. J. Abrams and his collaborators for kicking fans in the teeth and for making unnecessary, dumb narrative choices. And shame on George Lucas for going along with it all.

Perhaps Episode VIII could begin with Leia waking up next to Han, looking puzzled, and murmuring, “I've just had the strangest dream.”

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

As we know, a great deal of attention has been focused on-line on the issue of whether Planned Parenthood locals have sold tissue from aborted fetuses. To provide another test of the DailyNerve platform:

I've been involved for several years in the work of BigNerve and associated companies. One of those companies, DailyNerve, focuses on "solution news." According to the site: "Have you ever read a piece of news and thought, “how hard could that really be to fix?” or better yet, “I know how we could fix that!”? Well, here’s your chance to get those ideas out there. At DailyNerve you are the think tank to the news. / We have one simple goal. We want to find ingenious solutions for common problems that plague people on both a local and a global level, and we want to utilise crowd sourcing to do it. That means getting those ideas out of YOUR head, and into reality.”

DailyNerve works by inviting reader responses to question-centered contests, with reader-proposed solutions assessed through a sophisticated crowd-based technique. I'm testing the platform today with a question (framed, like all DailyNerve contest questions, in the subjunctive):

How could activists seeking to expand transportation options in New York City and to undermine the medallion oligopoly respond most effectively to mayor Bill deBlasio’s attempt to limit Uber’s operations in New York?Here's the contest on DailyNerve. Please check out the site and let me know what you think.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Less than a year ago, Seth Adam Smith's great blog post, "Marriage Isn't For You," went viral. In the post, Smith explains how, not long before his wedding, his dad dealt bluntly with his cold feet by urging him to think about giving to, rather than getting from, his bride-to-be.

It is, as I say, a great piece. But it raises an interesting question for me, a question somewhere at the border of normative and applied ethics.

The crucial moment in Smith's story comes when his dad says:

Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. . . . Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.

It seems clear that the elder Smith isn't offering a report on what he thinks his son is doing, much less on what people in general are doing. So what is he claiming, then?

It might be useful to contrast what seems to be going on in Seth's dad's comments with a more straightforward account of devoted love in marriage.

Such an account begins, let us suppose, with the first stage of a couple's interaction. Perhaps the lover begins by simply liking the beloved, before going on to find the beloved attractive romantically, erotically, or both. In an ongoing spiral of engagement, liking and attraction give rise to the determination to engage further, which leads to additional bonding. The lover begins to incorporate the beloved into the lover's own sense of self, sense of identity. At the same time, the lover's delight in and desire for the beloved grow.

At this point, at least two complementary things may occur. (i) The beloved may find the beloved—whether simply because the beloved occupies a more central place in the lover's live and world, so that the lover is more aware of the beloved as a three-dimensional, vulnerable human with particular needs, or because particular needs and vulnerabilities on the part of the beloved present themselves to the lover—a vulnerable person whose needs evoke a desire to offer care and nurture. (ii) The lover incorporates the beloved clearly into the lover's own sense of who he or she is—a process of attachment, identification, and bonding. These developments prompt the lover to reach out, to will, to care for the beloved.

Meanwhile, delight and desire continue to play their independent roles in drawing the lover into the beloved's presence and prompting the lover to seek increased closeness with the beloved.

The lover moves toward a multi-part commitment: (1) a commitment to caring for the beloved, a commitment that prompts the desire to provide the reassurance and security that constancy can afford; (2) a commitment to achieve a "we" relationship with the beloved; (3) a commitment to the beloved to care for her or him precisely in and through the maintenance of a "we" relationship.

The initial commitments are commitments the lover makes in and to her- or himself, ratifying the felt attachment and bonding that's already been taking place. The third-stage commitment builds on these commitments, expressing them, at the right time, to the beloved. Thus, love here begins as impulse, becomes interaction-forged attachment and bond, becomes a self-chosen commitment, and is consummated as an interpersonal commitment.

So on this model, which I'd like to think will be familiar in general terms to many readers, love's obligations grow out of love's bond which grows out of love's desire.

Seth's dad seems to be saying something different. In his words, as Seth reports them, the focus seems to be on an in-built teleology. Love and marriage just are for particular purposes.

It should be clear that this can't be a report on the purposes empirical individuals happen to have. After all, Seth's dad isn't just reminding him of a purpose he already he has—he's saying, instead, that Seth should have a particular purpose. What, then, is the force of the should here?

Clearly, Seth's dad could just mean that romantic relationships and marriages offer the opportunity to love unselfishly. But he seems to be saying more than this. He clearly implies that Seth is choosing and feeling deficiently because he is not immediately inclined to love openly and generously to his betrothed.

But he is also not saying that Seth is choosing in a manner inconsistent with commitments to himself and to his betrothed. For his language seems to imply that love's imperatives precede these commitments. There is, on his view, a set purpose for marriage, so that if one is going to marry at all, one should embrace this purpose.

The question, I think, is how Seth's dad would have responded if Seth had said, "Well, maybe you're right that 'marriage' as an institution has the character you describe, so that if I commit to marriage I am committing to behaving in this way. But what's to stop me and my beloved from entering a parallel institution, call it 'schmarriage', that lacks any expectation of devoted love but has many of the other superficial feature of marriage?"

It might well be that Seth's beloved would prefer a marriage to a schmarriage, so that, if he's going to commit to her at all, he'll need to commit to marriage rather than schmarriage. And, indeed, he might prefer that she adopt in relation to him the attitudes involved in marriage rather than those associated with schmarriage, and be willing for this reason to offer her a commitment to marriage. But while this might be a perfectly good reason for Seth to commit to a devotedly loving marriage, it's not what's in view here, since Seth's dad, in Seth's story, criticizes Seth for not wanting to commit to a devotedly loving marriage, and does so because of his judgment about Seth's attitude toward his beloved. His dad seems to presuppose an imperative something like this: Choose to commit to marriage in order to give to your beloved. He seems to think Seth would act wrongly or deficiently if he ignored this imperative.

I can think immediately of at least two ways in which one might defend Seth's dad's claim.

(1) One might understand Seth's dad as embracing, not an ethics of rules or duties or principles but rather an ethics of virtue. On this view, Seth's choices would be problematic, not as inconsistent with any categorical or self-assumed obligation (to himself or to his beloved) but rather as revelatory of a deficient character. More work would be needed here, but the idea seems plain and fairly plausible: devotion to one's beloved is a virtuous disposition worth embracing, and failing to embody this disposition (when one has a beloved to love devotedly) is a reasonably criticizable deficiency. One might ground this account of human virtue in different ways—as an embodiment of self-sacrificial divine love (cp. Ephesians, Hosea); as the expression of an attitude we just find ourselves consistently valuing (the Humean approach); etc. Particularly relevant here might be the fact that devotion is a natural expression of love's own impulse, so that failing to love devotedly might be a matter of suppressing love's own inherent potential and dynamic. (Perhaps this is what Seth himself is getting at when he later says: "No, a true marriage (and true love) is never about you. It’s about the person you love—their wants, their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. Selfishness demands, “What’s in it for me?”, while Love asks, “What can I give?”) It's hard to argue against this on deontic grounds, but it might qualify as ugly, and so as a Humean vice.

(2) One might also attempt a deontic account. To make this view work, we'd need some kind of argument to the effect that romantic love and marriage necessarily entail committed devotion, and that someone opting to love romantically or to marry would act wrongly if she or he failed to commit to loving devotedly. One might try to make this case in several steps. (a) One could note that, whatever one says about marriages versus schmarriages, the formal features of marriage—shared life, shared identity, shared physical space (not necessary, but common), and sex (again, not necessary, but common and obviously expected) make for great vulnerability between the partners, and a commitment responsive to that vulnerability is appropriate even if the partners try to frame some less committed relationship (at least without a purposeful waiver on the part of one or both). (b) One could note that, by inviting one's beloved into a love relationship, one effectively deprives her or him of opportunities to enter other relationships that might offer devoted love; and, given the great value of such love, it would be unreasonable to preclude it in a context in which one's partner might ordinarily expect it. Alternatively, (c) one might see this obligation as a product of some kind of vocation (not necessarily willed or announced by God; cp. Lawrence A. Blum, Moral Perception and Particularity).

I think the virtue-based approach comes closer to capturing what I suspect Seth's dad is trying to say. In any case, both approaches deserve further study and reflection.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince contains a simple explanation of what seems like an important aspect of love: history. The Little Prince seeks to explain why his rose, in particular, matters to him. (It seems likely that Saint-Exupéry was trying to understand and justify his tumultuous relationship with his wife.) The Little Prince is deeply troubled by the discovery of many, many roses that seem phenomenally indistinguishable from his rose. He says to them:

You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or bloated, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose. [One might just as well say, “My gardenia” or “My frangipani.”]

As such quite different philosophers as Raymond Gaita and Stephen Clark have noted repeatedly (see, e.g., Stephen R. L. Clark, The Mysteries of Religion: An Introduction to Philosophy through Religion [Oxford: Blackwell 1986] 207-9; Stephen R. L. Clark, A Parliament of Souls, Limits and Renewals 2 [Oxford: Clarendon-OUP 1989] 116-35), history matters (this isn't the way Clark frames the matter). We are not simply interested in enjoying the beloved's phenomenal characteristics: we are interested in our relationship with the beloved her- or himself. To believe that my lover has been surreptitiously replaced with a phenomenally indistinguishable duplicate could easily be the first step on a path toward madness—not because the belief itself is insane (it might or might not be), but because trying to come to grips with the conflicting thoughts and emotions involved could prove devastating. When I love you, I am attached to you, not to anyone who happens to resemble you. (This is a way into one sort of quite serious problem with theories which seek to combine belief in (i) life after death understood as resurrection with (ii) a purely physicalist understanding of the human person.)

So, phenomenologically, we're with the Little Prince. Even apart from the issue of tender, compassionate care for the other that is a crucial part of any attitude we would recognize as loving, we value the beloved not simply because she or he can offer certain goods in the future but also because we are attached to her or him as a self extended over time. (It doesn't matter for present purposes whether the continuity is simply narrative in nature or whether it is rooted in some sort of persistent substance.) Once I have a conception of a relationship with the other as an individual with a history, rather than as a moment-by-moment source of satisfactions, then valuing that relationship will not be compatible with ongoing reevaluation of its investment potential: I value the relationship as such, and not merely for what it can produce.
The sunk-costs fallacy can be committed by someone who makes an inapposite judgment regarding the relevance of past expenditures to present-cum-future investment choices. Suppose I have spent $1,000,000 on a product line that has so far made me $250,000, and which can be disposed of for another $250,000, so that I am (or will be) down $1,000,000 total. I can spend another $100,000 to reinvigorate the line in some way, with some chance of boosting my profits, or I can spend $500,000 on another product line entirely, with a significant chance of substantial new income, while shutting down the first product line. What ought to matter, conventional economic reasoning suggests, is my net income on either of the two options. My past investment shouldn't figure in my decision about the future.
It should be clear that, as an entrepreneur evaluating investment options in a case like this one, I am not in the same position as the Little Prince.
As the example has been framed, I can measure investment, loss, and profit using the same currency, and my objectives can be expressed with exclusive reference to this currency, so that it is quite easy to see (allowing for the reasonable determination of probabilities) what my losses and gains can be expected to be. The Little Prince has invested time and care, but his goal is not to yield more time spent caring for the rose, so the comparison between investment and output can't be made straightforwardly in the way it can in the product-line instance.
Not only is the desired output incommensurable with what has been invested, at least in significant part, but the Little Prince isn't seeking an external good. What he values is precisely the ongoing relationship with his rose. His goal is not to maximize the æsthetic pleasure of encounters with the phenomenal features of his rose or of roses like her. He is not seeking to maximize anything external to his relationship with her. Rather, he seeks to extend and nourish the relationship itself. And he seeks to do this not because the relationship itself is a reliable means of generating certain satisfactions; the values the relationship yields are internal to it. As Robert Nozick (whose discussion of this topic I only read, thanks to a suggestion from David Gordon, after crafting the initial version of this post) observes crisply, “Don't commit the sunk costs fallacy”

may be a correct rule for the maximization of monetary profit, but it is not an appropriate general principle of decision . . . . We do not treat out past commitments to others as of no account except insofar as they affect our future returns, as when breaking a commitment may affect others' trust in us and hence our ability to achieve other future benefits; and we do not treat the past efforts we have devoted to ongoing projects of work or of life as of no account (except insofar as this makes their continuance more likely to bring benefits than other freshly started projects would). Such projects help to define our sense of ourselves and of our lives.

Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1993) 22.
That's true now, of course, but, an objector might say, it's not true initially. Initially, the Little Prince simply values and delights in the rose and cares for her accordingly—for her own sake, so that she will persist, and for his sake, so that his relationship with her will persist. At first, this seems likely to be because of its observable features and the characteristics of its relationship with. But, over time, he comes to be attached to the rose as an individual persisting over time, caring about the rose as an other with her own point of view and valuing precisely his connection with her.
Now, it is open to the objector to say that the Little Prince shouldn't value the rose in this way, that he should value her only as a source of future values or satisfactions. But what would be the rationale for this normative claim? The notion that the sunk-costs fallacy is a fallacy depends on the idea that the investor wants value of quantity X but settles for some sub-unity fraction of X simply because of prior investment. The idea of the sunk-costs fallacy as a fallacy presupposes that the investment can be evaluated in virtue of its potential to produce a certain kind of output. The investor acts irrationally, on the standard view of the fallacy, when she fails to maximize the relevant output.
But the Little Prince has become attached to this particular rose. The objector could dismiss his continued commitment to her as irrational only if the Little Prince's goal were to generate some value or satisfaction and if his continued commitment could be shown to generate this value or satisfaction in a lower quantity than some alternative in which he had not previously invested. But to judge the Prince as irrational on this basis would be to misunderstood the logic of his interactions with the rose. He doesn't value the rose in the way he would need to for the objection to find any purchase. And the charge of economic, or instrumental, irrationality thus can't get off the ground: this kind of charge is a judgment about means, not ends.
Perhaps, however, the objector might suggest that there was something irrational about the transformation in the Little Prince's attitudes—in coming to value a relationship with a particular rose, a particular individual, rather than valuing simply what the relationship, or the individual, might be expected to yield on an ongoing basis.There will, of course, be economic arguments against this kind of position, rooted in the idea that future yields will be greater when sought in ways that don't depend on persistent attention to future yields. Committed engagement yields better outcomes than case-by-case, moment-by-moment, assessment of probable outcomes. As recent analysts have pointed out, it will be useful to have a reputation as someone who persists. (See here, for example.) And there will be informational and resource constraints on pursuing alternate options in ways that make it reasonable to consider sunk costs.But while this may be correct, it doesn't capture the way we actually experience relationships with valued others, personal and impersonal. Consider the loss of a farm that has been in one's family for eight generations. The point is not that one has, or that one's ancestors have, invested in the farm at a particular level: evaluating the loss of the farm isn't a matter of evaluating investments, profits, or losses at all, but of one's attachment to the property and its role in constituting one's identity. Thus, “[t]hat there must be something which compensates for a finite loss is just a dogma, one which is more familiar in the traditional version to the effect that every man has his price.” (See Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” Utilitarianism: For and Against, by J. J. C. Smart and Williams [Cambridge: CUP 1973] 144-5.)

I may develop a relationship with a particular object, place, rose (or gardenia, or frangipani), or person for any number of reasons. But my ongoing interaction with it creates a bond, an attachment, that gives it a special place in my motivational structure and so in my deliberation. (The bond need not be created in this way; my point is simply that it can be.) (i) My story is now a story in which interaction and involvement with this entity plays a significant part. (ii) My self-understanding is as someone defined in relation to this entity. (iii) The entity occupies a significant role vis-a-vis my priorities. (iv) Emotionally, I am attached to this entity, with the emotion reasonably understood as registering its place in my story and in my identity and in my priorities. All this is particularly true if the focus of my relationship is an entity extended through time, not appropriately understood as simply a collection of things strung along a temporal clothesline. (John Searle has argued, without elaborate metaphysical foundations, that selves can be thus understood: see John Searle, Rationality in Action [Cambridge, MA: MIT 2001] 75-96.)

The Little Prince doesn't persist in his relationship with the rose because he mistakenly supposes that doing so will yield more external goods than any alternative. He does so because he values the internal good of the relationship with the rose, a relationship with an individual extended over time, and because the rose, and his relationship with her, have come to constitute (in part) who he is.

Friday, December 27, 2013

There are no guns in my home, and there never have been. But I believe there are several mutually reinforcing reasons for skepticism about proposals for gun control.

Gun control measures reduce the popular capacity for armed resistance to tyranny and invasion.

These measures limit opportunities for self-defense against thuggery.

They deny people the benefits of the deterrent effect exerted by the widespread belief that most members of a given population are armed.

They increase people's dependence on state authorities who would otherwise be seen as irrelevant and unnecessary.

They leave state authorities more willing to violate people's rights with impunity.

The implementation of these measures increases the power of the state and provides excuses for state authorities to intrusively surveil people's nonviolent activities, thus compromising privacy and autonomy.

The implementation of these measures involves forcible interference with nonviolent conduct—at minimum the imposition of fines and the confiscation of property, and, if the criminal law is used, the subjection of people to criminal penalties. This is objectionable for the same reason the criminalization of nonviolent conduct generally is objectionable.

I suggest, in brief, two sets of reasons not to embrace belief in reincarnation:

1. Even if one affirms some sort of numerical duality between brain and mind—a duality that need not involve any commitment to substance dualism—it still seems simplest to suppose that the brain gives rise to mental life. At least at first blush, this is what our experience and observation suggest. But, for reincarnation to make sense, one would need to imagine that not only a mind or soul numerically other than the brain but also a personal self with memories, personality, etc., exists in distinction from the brain. It will then be necessary to explain both (a) how this personal self comes into existence in the first place, if not as an initial product of brain activity and (b) how it comes to be intimately associated with a particular brain.

2. In tandem with these metaphysical or scientific objections to belief reincarnation, there are also existential objections. Most important is the devaluation of the empirical self, which seems likely to be swallowed up in some sort of transempirical self. Most people are interested in survival research, psi phenomena, etc., because of their hopes for themselves and their loved ones. But belief in reincarnation seems to take away with one hand what it gives with the other. The reincarnationist promises life after death. But the life after death offered by or in connection with belief in reincarnation is not the persistent life of the empirical self: the history, the relationships, etc., enjoyed by the empirical self seem to recede into unimportance, since they seem to play a limited role in constituting the contents of the actual self. This means, of course, that my own particular life seems less significant—but also that any and all empirical lives ultimately don't seem to matter a great deal, since the underlying self is evidently importantly distinct from them.

These objections are hardly decisive, but the first set suggests why I find belief reincarnation metaphysically baroque and the second why I find it existentially unappealing.

Monday, December 23, 2013

I have, as some readers might know, been reading a good deal about death and life beyond death in recent months. In light of what I've read, I've found myself thinking about a philosophical puzzle related to beliefs regarding suicide.

I don't believe anyone I know well has ever committed, or attempted, suicide. But the topic remains of considerable interest (and the subject of vocal debate).

Suicide and New Age Beliefs about Life after Death

A number of New Age thinkers and experients report that someone who has committed suicide can be expected to run into special problems in the afterlife as they conceive it. Sometimes, this is said to be because of the various moral problems putatively attendant on suicide. I am inclined to think that suicide (at least often) is morally problematic, and I have no particular beef, therefore, with those who reason in this way.

But I find interesting and puzzling another account of why suicides might create distinctive afterlife difficulties. On this view, a person who commits suicide runs into difficulties in the afterlife because she or he has died before her appointed time of death. I think it is quite difficult to make sense of this notion.

It seems as if one's time of death might be appointed in four ways—as a product of predetermination, as a matter of fate, as a target set by divine decree, or as a matter of natural teleology. None of these provides a plausible basis for the view that suicides suffer special liabilities after death.

Predetermination

When speaking of predetermination, I have nothing more mysterious in mind than what we ordinarily think of when talking about determinism. The idea would simply be that every event could be seen to have an antecedently sufficient cause. The history of the world could, in principle, once under way, take only one course. If predetermination of this sort obtains, then of course the time and manner of my death, like the time and manner of every other event, is certain, necessary.

But if this is true, it is difficult to see how suicide could bring about death "before one's time." Whenever one dies will be whenever it was necessary, in a fairly strong sense, that one die. However one dies will be however it was necessary, in a fairly strong sense, that one die. The time and manner of one's death will be the appointed time and manner in as robust a sense as seems possible.

To be sure, if one committed suicide, it is possible that one might not be as advanced, as spiritually mature, as one would have been had one lived a much longer life. But this will not be a problem unique to suicides, since all sorts of factors might lead to one's death at a young age, an age such that, had those factors not interfered, one might have lived many years beyond it. So it wouldn't make sense to single out the suicide as specially in difficulty in the afterlife.

Even if it is the case that one should not seek to enter the afterlife before the appointed time and in any other than the appointed manner, one need not worry about running into special difficulties in virtue of committing suicide if one understands the relevant sort of appointment to be predetermination, since when and how one dies by suicide will be appointed. And any difficulties encountered by the suicide will be parallel to, no different from, those encountered by many different sorts of non-suicides.

Fate

Fate is a slippery notion, but I take it to involve something like the idea that an outcome or process is inevitable under a certain description, but that surrounding or related circumstances need not be. It may be fated that I die on September 23, but it may be (on the relevant view) up to me whether I die in Damascus or Baghdad.

We may imagine that the time of my death is fated, that the manner is fated, or that both are fated.

Suppose the time is fated—I am, say, due to die on September 23. But the manner is not. As it happens, I commit suicide on this day.

There may, of course, be moral problems with this decision. But it cannot be the case that I have chosen to die before my time, for I have opted to die on the relevantly fated day. So, if the date of my death is fated, there can be no obvious problem with my decision to commit suicide on that day. And, if the day is fated, then it cannot be the case that I succeed in committing suicide, or otherwise dying, on some other day. For, if I could, then my death would not be fated in the relevant sense.

Similarly, the manner of my death, but not the date, might be fated. But either the fated manner is not suicide, in which case I will not, ex hypothesi, be able to commit suicide, or it is suicide, in which case it will not be blameworthy.

But, the objector might reply, it might be that my death by suicide was fated, but that I have chosen to commit suicide early. However, this response seems problematic for at least two reasons. (i) The notion of fate was invoked to give content to the idea of my death's being before its appointed time. But there does not seem to be a notion of an appointed time in play here. (ii) The imagined account provides no reason to think that committing suicide early should yield special difficulties, even if some sense can be made of early death on this account. I might, after all, be fated to die in an automobile accident, without its being the case that the specific circumstances of the accident are fated; and it might turn out that I die in this manner at age two rather than age eight-two.

So the notion of death as fated does not seem to provide a plausible basis for treating suicide as leading to special difficulties in the afterlife.

Decree

Many New Age believers and adherents of similar belief-systems affirm the reality of God, though of course others do not. Those who do embrace some sort of theistic belief might seek to explain the idea of special afterlife disabilities for suicides by maintaining that God has established a time for me to die and that suicide brings about my death before this time.

This view seems to run into several difficulties.

(i) There is nothing about the view as stated that explains why my suicide might not bring about my death at just the time decreed as the time of my death by God. It might also take place after the decreed time, meaning that I am , perhaps (assuming spiritual maturation benefits from, or is not, at any rate, impeded by, more experience) even better prepared for the afterlife than I would have been had I died sooner.

(ii) Supposing this is not the case (the view must presuppose some sort of free will vis-a-vis God, so that I can, indeed, choose to violate God's decree, whether knowingly or not), there is no reason to single out the suicide for special liabilities, since murder and accident might also lead to my death in advance of the decreed date.

(iii) The decree as envisioned seems to be quite arbitrary. There is nothing in the position—so far, at any rate—to explain why a given time should be decreed. This is the sort of thing likely to make many New Age believers uncomfortable. And the essential arbitrariness makes it difficult, in any case, to see why any liabilities might attend on the suicide's putatively early death, since the death is early only in relation to an arbitrary divine decree. The liabilities seem likely to obtain only if they involve arbitrarily imposed postmortem divine punishments (for violating a decree of which there is every reason to think the suicide entirely ignorant).

The notion that a suicide's death is early because inconsistent with an arbitrary divine command seems to have little to recommend it.

Natural Teleology

A final possible explanation for special liabilities for suicides after death associated with the idea that the suicide dies before his or her time might be rooted in the idea that, objectively speaking, I need to reach a certain level of flourishing before I am ready for some sort of postmortem maturation, and that suicide preempts my progress toward this level of flourishing. However, because there is no inevitable link between personal maturation (or any other plausible conception of flourishing) and time of death, it is hard to see why this should, again, pose any particular difficulty for the suicide.

Doubts about Some New Age Critiques of Suicide

In brief, the special, non-moral justifications for avoiding suicide offered by some New Age believers, justifications having to do with special postmortem difficulties for suicides, do not seem plausible. I suspect, without evidence, that some of those who defend these justifications do so because of their moral worries about suicide (worries which, as I have said, seem quite reasonable to me), in tandem with the further worry that belief in life after death in some way makes suicide less problematic. Whether it does is a matter for another post. But, if it does, that seems to me to be a consequence simply to be accepted: it is unlikely that all of our moral intuitions could or should remain untouched by our beliefs about the actual consequences of particular actions.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Foundation for Economic Education has an enviable
history. For over half a century, it has sought to share the conviction that
society can and should be organized on the basis of peaceful, voluntary
cooperation. It has treated the key terms in its name, economic and education,
with appropriate breadth—focusing not only on the contribution of unfettered
exchange to human well being but also on the philosophy underlying a commitment
to voluntary cooperation in the economic realm and the historical, social, and
political context of the quest for freedom, while seeking to enhance
understanding of the idea of freedom in a broad range of ways.

Peaceful conduct may be foolish or immoral, of course. But
people have no business interfering with it by
force—protests, boycotts, and educational efforts are perfectly OK, of
course. Accepting a commitment to peace as the minimal requisite of decent human
interaction, so that people can be expected to cooperate on the basis of
persuasion rather than coercion, doesn’t solve any and all social problems. It
points, however, to a context within which those problems can be addressed reasonably
by free people.

Read, who wondered in retrospect whether the name he’d
selected for his Foundation was unnecessarily narrow, saw that freedom was a
single piece of cloth. To understand the meaning and justification of what he
termed “the freedom philosophy” was to see that peace had to reign in all
aspects of human life. It’s arbitrary to think about freedom narrowly in the
economic realm; dedication to economic freedom makes sense in tandem with
dedication to civil liberties and to peace in the international arena (and also,
I believe, to a society marked by the absence of arbitrary authority ofwhatever sort and to solidaristic mutual aid). To talk about free trade without
also talking about free immigration or the war on (some) drugs or the prison
system or unjust violations of property rights by well connected corporations
is ultimately senseless. While not an anarchist, Read embraced an extremely
limited conception of the just reach of state power and actively promoted the
cause of peace and openness to the world in the face of militarism and
nationalism.

Leonard Read must be spinning very rapidly in his grave.

Even as it abandons the famous Irvington-on-Hudson
headquarters Read established, FEE is apparently seeking, pointlessly, to abandon
the mission Read developed, too. An organization that once fostered widespread
embrace of the freedom philosophy now intends to provide basic instruction in
economics to 16-to-24-year-olds. This means FEE won’t be delivering the summer
seminars in advanced Austrian Economics that once enabled it to connect with
graduate students. It won’t be targeting people at multiple stages of their
lives seeking greater understanding of the grounds and implications of belief
in freedom. And it can be expected to limit dramatically the content of The Freeman, the flagship FEE
publication once edited (before its acquisition by FEE) by Frank Chodorov,
shying away from discussions of peace, open borders, the involuntary
confinement of “mental patients,” the drug war, cultural issues, and the
history of corporatist mischief. As a result, the very 16-to-24-year-olds the
Foundation wants to serve will be ill-prepared to meet the challenges they will confront in their classrooms and in
conversations with their friends, as will ordinary working people in search of
ammunition that will help them communicate the freedom philosophy in their
homes, congregations, and workplaces.

This change in course is doubtless not a product of
mischief. It may well reflect a genuine desire to see FEE vibrant and strong.
But it is, I believe, a profound and quite unnecessary mistake.

FEE has a unique brand. It has sought neither to be hip nor
to be reactionary; it hasn’t taken sides in freedom movement faction fights. Refusing
to accept the legitimacy of inside-the-Beltway policy debates, it hasn’t
focused on the construction of policy analyses. Declining to engage in
technical, accommodationist wonkery, it has emphasized big ideas—and their backgrounds
and applications—in ways that ordinary people of all ages could understand and appreciate,
that could simultaneously enlighten novices and stimulate old hands. FEE should
clarify and promote its distinctive brand rather than diluting or abandoning
it.

But—for the moment, at least—that doesn’t seem to be in the
cards.

No longer fostering noninterference with “anything that’s
peaceful” by anyone and everyone, even as it bids adieu to long-time ace Freeman editor Sheldon Richman, the Foundation will encourage regard for
peace only within a limited range of human encounters, and do so only in a narrowed
variety of venues and vocabularies. Giving up on its currently stated commitment to articulating “the most consistent case for the ‘first principles‘ of freedom: the sanctity of private property, individual liberty, the rule of law, the free market, and the moral superiority of individual choice and responsibility over coercion,” FEE will effectively ignore the links
between freedom in different aspects of our lives and the reality that it makes
the most sense to be pro-choice about economics when one is pro-choice about everything, across the board. I hope
those who are as saddened by this development as I am will help to foster the
growth of institutions and the organization of events that will share, as FEE
will no longer do, a comprehensive, multi-layered vision of peaceful, voluntary
cooperation as the only defensible foundation for a good society.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

If you say you're against the state these days, someone's sure to ask you how your views parallel Ron Paul's.

I'm sitting out this year's electoral battles: I'm not a principled non-voter (though I'm skeptical about electoral politics), but my friend Brad Spangler has agreed to promote my book, The Conscience of an Anarchist, in connection with his Vote for Nobody campaign. But that doesn't mean I don't have opinions about the election season.

To begin with, anyone who's derailing proponents of the corporate-warfare-administrative-national-security state like Willard "Mitt" Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry deserves three cheers for performing a public service. Until now, the Republican field has been dominated by warmongers and corporatists outdoing themselves in their support for state thuggery.

And, in case you haven't noticed, the same thing is true on the Democratic side, except that there are no alternatives there. Barack Obama clearly wants to serve George W. Bush's third term. His record of support for war, for the various abuses of the national security state—including surveillance, assassination, secrecy, and indefinite detention, and for bailouts and other forms of corporatism make him largely indistinguishable from his predecessor. And his willingness to legitimate evils that could previously have been framed as GOP aberrations as the products of a bipartisan consensus is especially troubling.

A Gingrich, Romney, or Perry term in the White House would be a disaster. So would another Obama term.

On many of the issues that I care about most, Ron Paul stands tall. New Left icon Tom Hayden writes: "Paul opposes the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He opposes the empire of military bases. He opposes Wall Street thievery, tax subsidies for oil companies, the suppression of WikiLeaks, the drug war and the criminalization of marijuana. Those positions might just save America." And Hayden is surely on to something.

Politicians are most unlikely to save America. But by far the worst thing governments do is to make war, and Paul's campaign is committed to dramatically reducing the chances that the US government's awesome power will be used in war-making.

And of course he's right about his other signature issue, too: as long as there's a central bank, the state will use it to fund otherwise unsupportable wars. Ending the Fed is a crucial step toward peace.

He's opposed to bailouts and other forms of corporate privilege. And he's acknowledged the legitimacy of many of the Occupy movement's concerns.

His stances regarding immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage are wrong, and he needs to be much more clearly radical where other issues, like racism, poverty, and health care, as well as IP and worker freedom, are concerned.

It is unclear to me precisely what Paul actually thinks about immigration, but it seems apparent that he is open to at least some immigration restrictions (though, even here, he seems to be better than his fellow Republicans and President Obama. Anyone who believes in the freedom to work, who regards borders as arbitrary lines drawn by politicians, and who sees immigration freedom as a key weapon in the real war on poverty should have no time for nativist or nationalist stances on this (or any other) issue.

Paul's conservative positions on abortion and same-sex marriage aren't conservative enough for many on the religious right. But they're still mistaken.

He'd like to see the legality of abortion decided at the state level—an option I fear would lead to lots of victimless crime prosecutions. And he has supported the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which has had devastating consequences for same-sex couples. (Of course all levels of government should get out of the marriage business, but turning marriage into a private contractual relationships will pose serious problems for people in same-sex relationships until relationship status stops mattering entirely to government agencies.)

As a leftist, I believe in abortion rights and marriage equality. And I believe it's important to challenge not only bad laws and policies regarding these matters but also the moral convictions and cultural values that underly them.

I am confident that Ron Paul is not himself a racist. But the controversy about the racially inflammatory language in some of the newsletters his office mailed out in decades past, and the racist and anti-immigrant flavor of some immigration materials Paul campaigners have distributed more recently, is sure to raise its head again now that his campaign is attracting more attention. Paul has sometimes reached out to unsavory, even racist allies in the past, employing a strategy I find deeply troubling and utterly unwarranted. I believe he needs to repudiate this strategy while reemphasizing his own principled opposition to racism.

As an anarchist, I believe the state is unjust, unnecessary, and dangerous. So I'd certainly like to see it reduced in size rather than expanded. And Ron Paul is actually interested in making the bloated behemoth that is the United States government smaller (though he still seems mistakenly to treat it as legitimate in principle). But I think it's vital to proceed dialectically, in full awareness of the interconnections among various forms of oppression. The state is excellent at breaking people's legs and then offering them crutches (thanks to Harry Browne for the analogy). In a sane world, it would do neither; but taking away the crutches while leaving the state's leg-breaking activities in place or unremedied isn't sane, or fair, either.

And if Paul were a candidate on the left, he would be very clear about this point when discussing issues like racial discrimination, poverty relief, and health care.

Ron Paul is, as far as I can tell, a kind and decent person who has said important things—things leftists should endorse. Anti-state leftists would do well to affirm Paul's positions on war, civil liberties, the drug war, corporatism, and the national security state, while challenging his stances on abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage and his cultural conservatism and urging him to radicalize his views of remedies for racial injustice, of poverty, of IP, of worker freedom, and of capitalism.

Claus’s immigration status is in question. He has repeatedly entered the United States without a passport.

Claus appears to have purposefully avoided the inspection of the goods he has imported into the United States by customs authorities and the payment of relevant tariffs.

Self-described “pro-family” groups have asked the administration to take action because Claus’s provision of toys to children interferes with their parents’ rights to oversee the upbringing of their offspring without adequate supervision, since many popular toys may encourage attitudes and behavior of which parents disapprove or legitimize values and lifestyles parents find objectionable.

The fact that Claus has failed to provide information about the contents of the packages he carries has raised questions about whether any of his actions violate US drug or money-transfer laws.

Claus enters and traverses US airspace using a custom-built vehicle that lacks approval by the Federal Aviation Administration. Further, FAA officials note that he does not file flight plans, lacks a pilot’s license, and flies through darkened skies guided only by a tiny bioluminescent red light, in a clear violation of traffic safety regulations.

There is no record that Claus, who clearly “conducts business” in the United States, has eever obtained a business license.

Some items delivered by Claus are believed to have been produced in violation of US patent and copyright laws and international treaties.

Clause defenders had hoped that the arrival of the Obama administration would lead to reduced emphasis on the planned Claus prosecution. But the presence of vocal Claus critics—including Secretary of State, said to regard Claus as a “persistent threat to national security,” and Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole, who has been quoted as urging the North American Air Defense Command to “shoot the old guy out of the sky”—in the upper echelons of the Obama administration suggests that Claus will continue to be a federal target.

US Senator Joseph Lieberman (Ct.) has called on the White House to support designating Claus’s North Pole workshop a terrorist organization. “We’ll see how long people keep supporting this bastard when they realize we can seize their assets and lock them up in Guantanamo,” Lieberman enthused to a National Press Club audience.

While the administration has yet to formally endorse Lieberman’s proposal, “We’ll keep looking,” Waldron told reporters. “Americans concerned about their safety can be sure that we’re going to put a stop to this persistent threat.”

This is an altered version of a piece originally drafted by George Getz, who deserves full credit for the idea and much of the text. I discovered the original at Independent Political Report.

Friday, November 19, 2010

It is gratifying in the extreme to see consumers responding in increasingly vociferous fashion to the accelerating dehumanization of air travel: kudos, in particular, to the founders of We Won’t Fly. It would be truly exciting if ordinary people managed to persuade the USG to retreat by ending the pat-downs and pornoscanners.

But it would be very unfortunate if, should they win this battle, passengers let up the pressure for more decent traveling conditions. Yes, the TSA has gone too far; but it’s never not gone too far. While the latest indignities are atrocious, if we treat the air travel regime in place before they began as largely acceptable, we will provide incontrovertible evidence that, like the frog in the proverbial kettle, we’ve become far too tolerant of abuse.

Even before 9/11, air travel was often unpleasant. There was too much screening; too much passenger time and energy were wasted on dealing with security theatre. But during the past nine years, we’ve moved from the antechamber of hell to its seventh or eighth circle. To take some obvious examples:

Our ability to check in at the last minute has been impeded by rules that preclude checking in less than thirty minutes before take-off. (Remember Robert Hayes’s last minute pursuit of Elaine onto her flight in Airplane? Presumably, it wouldn’t even be possible under today’s asinine rules.)

More broadly, our time is wasted by tedious security screenings that simultaneously necessitate our spending far more time in airports than we once did and subject us to persistent and repeated indignities. We’re forced to remove our shoes, to permit our belongings to be searched in a far more detailed fashion than we once did, and to surrender harmless nail clippers and toothpaste tubes to thugs backed up by other thugs with guns.

Perhaps most irritatingly, in order to avoid making the screening process even longer, people without tickets aren’t allowed to come to airport gates to see off or collect their friends.

And the entire process is designed to treat everyone like a potential criminal. It’s this process, and not merely the use of this or that screening device or security technique, that has to end. A few tweaks here and there simply aren’t sufficient to fix the problem.

(1) The most basic feature of any solution has to be the recognition that the TSA’s security theatre is a response to factors created by the USG’s foreign policy. Suicide terrorism isn't a product of blood-lust or religious mania, however much those things may facilitate it: it's a (completely immoral) reaction, born of powerlessness and frustration, to imperial violence. If the USG really wants dramatically to reduce the risk of suicide terrorism, it simply needs to leave Iraq, leave Afghanistan, and close its network of military bases around the world (a move that would, conveniently, also save taxpayers [at least] hundreds of billions of dollars).

(2) As long as it continues to provide or regulate air travel security, passengers must keep demanding that the USG roll back air travel security regulations, at minimum, to their pre-9/11 level.

(3) Ultimately, though, the USG needs to get out of the airport security business. Consumers themselves need to be free to decide just what kinds of risks they're willing to tolerate: they should be free to choose low-risk/low-intrusiveness airlines or minimally-lower-risk/high-intrusiveness airlines (the deliberately tendentious formulation reflects my conviction that the real impact on passenger safety of Gestapo tactics is limited). (One qualifier: airlines that negligently allow passengers to be harmed in virtue of the imposition of risks greater than those for which the passengers contracted, or which negligently allow third parties to be harmed by suicide terrorists’ use of planes, ought to be subject to appropriate sorts of tort liability. This would presumably affect airlines’ security policies.) Michael Chertoff can fly under whatever conditions he likes; I just don't want him and his corporate paymasters determining under what conditions I do.

Responding to an earlier version of these remarks, an acquaintance observed that airlines could use responsibility for security as an excuse for higher prices and bad service. No doubt. But it is difficult to imagine a less consumer-friendly environment than the one that obtains now. And since airlines and airports would have reason to compete on the convenience-and-dignity vs. security mix, there would, at any rate, be pressure for the treatment of consumers to improve. At present, by contrast, airlines and airports have no reason to give consumers’ concerns any weight at all.

Passenger anger at airport indignities can play a crucial role in making air travel more humane. But it can do so only if passengers continue to protest until they are treated like valued customers rather than criminals and slaves—until the root causes of suicide terrorism are addressed, post-9/11 indignities are eliminated, and, ultimately, air travel security arrangements are set by mutual agreements between airlines and consumers.

About Me

I’m Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Tom and Vi Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University and a left-wing market anarchist.
I take anarchism to be the project of doing without the state. I'm a leftist because I support inclusion and oppose subordination, deprivation, and aggressive and preventive war. I’m happy to identify as both, in something not unlike the sense suggested by Benjamin Tucker’s work, a socialist and a libertarian.
Recent books: Anarchy and Legal Order (Cambridge 2013); Economic Justice and Natural Law (Cambridge 2009); Radicalizing Rawls (Palgrave 2014); The Conscience of an Anarchist (Cobden 2011); and Markets Not Capitalism (Minor Compositions-Autonomedia 2011) (co-edited with Charles W. Johnson). Next, among others: Libertarian Theories of Class (co-edited with Ross Kenyon and Roderick T. Long).